Selkie Folklore: Should we force soul to serve us?
This Jungian Life
The Selkie swims ashore at night, sheds her seal skin, hides it, and delights in her human form. In Celtic lore, she is the wild feminine soul, a creature of land and sea, innocent and beautiful, who cannot thrive in domesticity. In folklore, the seal-folk are discovered by humans. Their natural, joyous spirit, grace, and affection invite contact. Humans are drawn to them, but if they touch, parting is unbearable. Many a young man, desperate to maintain the life-giving embrace of nature, steals a Selkie’s seal skin, locking her into a human form. Helpless, she is led into...
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INITIATIONS: universal processes that spark transformation
This Jungian Life
The archetype of Initiation is primordial, and its force guides our transformative transitions. For Jung, this change reshapes spiritual, emotional, intellectual, behavioral, and social dynamics. Rooted in his anthropological studies, Jung emphasized the vital role of formal ceremonies in fostering separation from parental influences and facilitating integration into adult communities. These ceremonies marked a clear transition from childhood and established an essential connection with the adult community, promoting the collaborative culture by containing unconscious forces. Derived from...
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The Barbie Movie: Can it Dismantle an American Myth?
This Jungian Life
[Spoiler Alert.] In the opening scene of the Barbie movie, listless little girls dressed as drab Dust Bowl mothers play at ironing as they tend plastic babies until a gigantic cosmic Barbie appears on the landscape in a vogue pose. Her presence inspires the girls to smash their dolls and cast off their pretend chores in a whirl of rageful frustration. While this scene spoofs 2001: A Space Odyssey, it unknowingly dramatizes an archetypal event in the collective American psyche. In 1959, the Barbie doll hit the market and created a stir. American mothers objected to her sensuous form, so...
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From SHAMANISM to JUNG: Understanding 'Loss of Soul'
This Jungian Life
As Jung’s anthropological studies expanded and his international travel exposed him to new cultures and ideas, he was taken by the concept of ‘loss of soul.’ A collapse of energy, a strange sudden alteration of personality, or episodes of blinding rage could signify a loss of soul from a shamanic perspective. The soul carries the animating and regulating forces as well as memory. In most traditions, it was expected to fly away upon death, much like the Egyptian Ba, depicted as a bird with a human head. Because the soul had an independent life, it might flee suddenly, leaving a...
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HAGITUDE: Sharon Blackie on the power of aging
This Jungian Life
Sharon Blackie calls us to the ancient archetype of the Hag as a figure of unapologetic emergence from cultural pressures that lock us into outworn roles and limiting beliefs. Drawing upon her transformative experiences in menopause Blackie grounds the mythic figure of the old woman who fashioned the world in her fierce determination to dissolve and reconfigure her professional and personal life. Identifying and rejecting cultural pressures to look and act a certain way as she ages, she claims the second half of her life for a post-heroic journey of intense creativity and unapologetic...
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THREE VOICES, ONE SONG: Lessons in Friendship
This Jungian Life
The essence of friendship is visible in its linguistic root: ‘to love.’ Cicero wrote, “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief." In modern times the art of friending seems lost. We have replaced shared experiences with Facebook posts and quell our loneliness by scrolling. With high spirits, we three revisit our first meeting and reflect on the discovery of kinship between us. Our experiences of trust, reciprocity, and shared hardship marked by endless conversations and abundant laughter forged our bond during...
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You're Not A Fraud: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
This Jungian Life
Imposter syndrome constellates the gut-wrenching fear of being exposed as a fraud no matter how much we have learned or the successes we have demonstrated. In 1978 two researchers identified and explored a painful phenomenon among some high-achieving women. Despite their high levels of success, they were convinced they were not as competent, intelligent, or skilled as others might think. Instead of identifying with their capabilities, they often attributed their success to luck, personal persuasion, or an unanticipated burst of energy. Further research revealed this struggle was equally...
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FRIEND or FOE: The AI Debate with Michael L. Littman, PhD
This Jungian Life
The uses and abuses of ChatGPT artificial intelligence language model have taken the collective imagination by storm. Apocalyptic predictions of the singularity, when technology becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, frighten us as we imagine a future where human intelligence is irrelevant. Prof. Michael Littman joins us to contextualize the advancement of artificial intelligence and debunk the paranoid rhetoric littering the public discourse. Michael has made groundbreaking research contributions enabling machines to learn from their experiences, assess the environment, make decisions,...
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The Conjunction of Art and Life with Peter Kramer
This Jungian Life
"Death of the Great Man" by Dr. Peter D. Kramer offers a glimpse into the character disordered alpha narcissist. It is more than a satirical political commentary on Donald Trump. It points us to a broader discourse on power dynamics in the collective psyche, the potential for authority to corrupt our humanity and the dangerous ways we escape from freedom by surrendering self-responsibility. The unique blend of psychiatric insight and literary narrative brings an unusual depth to the work. The narrator, psychiatrist Henry Farber, places the reader at his side, admitting his negative...
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Meeting Shadow on the Spiritual Path with Connie Zweig
This Jungian Life
Award-winning author, depth psychotherapist, and guide Connie Zweig shows us encountering darkness is a necessary part of our spiritual journey. In the first half of life, we disown aspects of ourselves to fit in and navigate our world more smoothly. Over time we realize all aspects of ourselves must be recalled and befriended. Integration of these shadow aspects lays the foundation for spiritual awakening. Through careful introspection, dreamwork, and self-confrontation, we can see beyond stereotypes and projections, avoiding the pitfalls of black-and-white thinking. Jung reminds us,...
info_outlineThomas Singer, M.D., Jungian Analyst and president of The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism joins us to decipher Archetypal Images and explain the essential role of A.R.A.S. in collecting and curating them.
Archetypes, as cosmic blueprints, dictate universal patterns of the collective unconscious, transcending personal experiences and cultural variations. They mold our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Archetypal images are their visible expressions, emerging in dreams, myths, and cultural narratives, providing a visual language linking psyche to self. They adapt and evolve across cultural contexts.
Archetypal theory traces back to Plato's theory of Forms, which proposed transcendental ideals, or "arkhetypos" (first-molded), as the pure essence behind physical manifestations. The Swiss psychiatrist CG Jung linked these archetypes to the collective unconscious, profoundly influencing our experiences.
Archetypal images carry universal resonance, stirring deep recognition within us. Iconic images, on the other hand, reflect temporal cultural dominants. Archetypal imagery identification involves recognizing recurring symbolic patterns with deep cultural or psychological significance.
In the therapeutic relationship, archetypal imagery offers a stage for the drama of the unconscious. The analyst’s role includes identifying the universal patterns in the analysand's dreams and fantasies. Interpreting these influences can free the analysand from the grip of debilitating complexes.
Archetypal images are also prominent in culture and commerce, shaping narratives and influencing behavior. They find use in brand narratives, films, religious and spiritual traditions, and even political leaders' narratives. However, they can both inspire and manipulate, highlighting the need for discernment and critical awareness.
Archetypal imagery also aids in expressing complex emotions and experiences. Expressions such as "Pandora’s box," "Siren’s call," and "Promethean knowledge" exemplify this influence on language and culture.
A.R.A.S. (www.ARAS.org) was initially assembled by Olga Froebe-Kapteyn, who collected illustrations of ancient symbolic artifacts at her estate on Lake Maggiore in southern Switzerland. These images illustrated the annual meetings of the Eranos Society, conducted by Froebe-Kapteyn from 1933, with participation from renowned scholars such as Heinrich Zimmer, Károly Kerényi, Mircea Eliade, C.G. Jung, Erich Neumann, Gilles Quispel, Gershom Scholem, Henry Corbin, Adolf Portmann, Herbert Read, Max Knoll, and Joseph Campbell.
In 1946, Froebe-Kapteyn donated her collection to the Warburg Institute in London, with duplicates given to the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich and the Bollingen Foundation in New York. Jessie E. Fraser, librarian of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York, expanded the archive beyond its original scope, leading to the creation of the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. The collection was acquired by the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York and copies were also kept at the C.G. Jung Institutes in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:
“I was walking down a scenic nature trail and felt awed at the sight of ducklings and their mother in a tree. Then a great owl swooped down and snatched the ducklings from their mother, flew to a nearby tree, and started gorging them while the mother could only stare in horror.”
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